exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Well I wanted to see how well the keyboard works, and it all works fine:


It's only assembled with the 2 screws holding in the mainboard, but it's enough to test.

One small problem is that some of the keys are sticky, so I likely need to clean and lubricate the stems to get things going smoothly before I reassemble for good.

That won't happen until the memory upgrade is done though, but I really wanted to try it all together :)

Keyboard now working lovely after a bit of a clean and a little lube :)

In the old ROM the function keys allowed setting of 40/80 column, but the EXOS 2.04 ROM doesn't, but it seems the commands 'text 40' and 'text 80' do the same thing.

Need to do a little reading on what options BASIC has.

I did find the manual on-line. Not sure where though.

Also, you have "OS" commands available to you within BASIC using the ':' operator. It's basically the same as '*' on the BBC. So, ":help" will list the ROMs and versions and give you help in the same way as "*HELP" on the Beeb.

stephen_usher wrote: 10 Aug 2026 20:23 I did find the manual on-line. Not sure where though.

Also, you have "OS" commands available to you within BASIC using the ':' operator. It's basically the same as '*' on the BBC. So, ":help" will list the ROMs and versions and give you help in the same way as "*HELP" on the Beeb.

Sounds interesting, will go and have a look for the user manual.

Manual found on archive.org.

A quick skim through and it seems to be quite a decent bacsic and well thought out machine.

I like that each function key has up to 4 options:

F key
Shift+F key
CTRL+F Key
ALT+F key

And all do differrent things. Seems like a decent version of BASIC as far as I can see.

Being able to use the joystick for editing is pretty cool too.

Thought a size comparison with the Speccy might be interesting:


I'd always imagined the Enterprise being a lot bigger.

Hmm, I'm a little concerned.

If I leave it running for a period of time, I get screen corruption.

For example, I leave it running a program that prints out characters to screen, and it eventually crashes.

I think I'll need to get the thermal camera on it, see if there is a bad RAM IC, I do hope it isn't a custom IC.

Will get pictures soon but I have the G7000 on the bench just now.

rubber_jonnie wrote: 11 Aug 2026 22:19 For example, I leave it running a program that prints out characters to screen, and it eventually crashes.

Probably not the case 99% of the time in this situation but just to check; its definitely not a buggy program, right? :D

mrbombermillzy wrote: 11 Aug 2026 22:29

rubber_jonnie wrote: 11 Aug 2026 22:19 For example, I leave it running a program that prints out characters to screen, and it eventually crashes.

Probably not the case 99% of the time in this situation but just to check; its definitely not a buggy program, right? :D

Nope, pretty simple for/next loop with no weird characters as far as I can tell...

Type the program in here. I'll see if it replicates on my machine after a similar period.